The sidewalk saga of Olympic View School continued in the Saturday paper. I didn’t pay attention to the entire story as it unfolded over the past year so I don’t know all the gory details. Seems that sidewalks are just not a very big issue on my agenda.

As my memory recollects, the budget for the school project at Olympic View Elementary did not contain the required amount of money for the sidewalk project. The city granted a variance to do the work on the buildings but not include the sidewalks until a following year. Now the city has called the project due and the school district doesn’t have the money to do the work (surprise!).

Hey, let’s jump on the Washington state anti-business bandwagon before the wheels fall off and we don’t get our share! We, the school board, have an idea. Let’s put it to Puget Sound Energy and make them pay most of the cost of the sidewalk project! With some sleight of hand and the stroke of a pen we can make them bail us out of yet another poorly managed government project. They have deep pockets and can afford this, let’s show them who’s boss around here!

We’ll turn the project over to the city and have them order PSE to move the power poles back out of the way of our sidewalk job (a very significant cost in the project). Once the city has put it to PSE we’ll only have to cough up the cost of the concrete work (gee, how big of you).

Voila! We, the government of the people, by the people and for the people will look very good to the people. We can show them how much money we saved on this project by putting it to a big corporation!

Now give us the money for the high school, let us show you what we can do there!

Scott Smith

Oak Harbor